A Whole New Meaning to Pillow Talk

If you were anywhere near the Compass while you hustling to get to DRL before noon, you likely noticed the mob of people pummeling each other with pillows. Needless to say, I was there, camera in hand, watching the chaos (oh, the things one does for journalism).

More clips and some context to the hostilities, after the jump.

But for those of you who missed the Penn Pillowfight Extravaganza, let me steal from Facebook to fill you in. The pillowfight was a flash mob. According to The Academic Bible (read: Wikipedia), "a flash mob is a large group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an unusual action for a brief time, then quickly disperse." And thus, today at 11:55, a group of Penn students assembled to block traffic, throw pillows at each other, and quickly dispersed.

Adding to the fun were the mass array of students who neglected to follow the cardinal rule of any pillowfight--BYOP--but stood on the side to document the chaos. At one point, a pair of students jumped on top of a Penn Dining van (whose poor driver looked terrified) to capture the action.

And while fun might have been had by the pillow warriors, the flash mob was more of a nuisance than anything. I mean, really? Blocking off the compass in the middle of the day? Don't we all know by now that Penn students don't like anything to interfere with their classes except for hangovers? Do you people think this is Brown?

But my description hardly does the event justice. So here's a longer YouTube video to give you a better idea.